Supplemental Updates for Georgia Gwinnett College - 2024

Observations and Next Steps

Key observations about the status and progress of our Momentum student success work in 2024:

• For the 2023-2024 academic year, the Board of Regents presented the Regents Momentum Award for Excellence in Advising and Student Success to Georgia Gwinnett College at its May 2024 meeting in Atlanta. The Momentum Award is designed to recognize “institutional advising that creates trajectory toward student success and completion,” and according to the award review committee, “Georgia Gwinnett's portfolio demonstrates a deep understanding of practices and strategies that are proven to support students, along with a history of reflection and review of these practices to adjust and align them to GGC's population and priorities. Through their work with Hispanic Achievers Committed to Excellence in Results (HACER) and Learning Communities, they demonstrate a deep commitment to establishing effective practices and using the results of this work to scale beyond initial pilots to impact the entire institution. Their work intentionally makes meaningful connections with students and shows tremendous commitment to building community among them and with the institution as a whole.”
• On March 1, 2024, GGC was honored to serve as the host institution for the Momentum Summit VII capstone in-person event. The event, held centrally in the GGC Student Center’s Large Venue Interactive Space (LVIS) highlighted the student success work of dedicated colleagues from around the system so that institutions could learn from each other. Included was a special “Student Voices and Campus Change” session, in which students from a range of USG institutions shared their success insights. 18 GGC students participated, including GGC’s Student Government Association (SGA) president.  
• Relationships across divisions, departments, and programming areas continue to be an area for enhancement: e.g., Student Affairs, Academic Affairs/Student Success, Enrollment Management, Information Technology. Progress has been made in regular meetings with department chairs to disseminate key information on learning communities, student success technology tools (related to our Success Networks strategy) and curriculum updates related to Core IMPACTS. More can be done in
• Staffing needs in some key areas have been challenging, but areas of need are being strategically identified.
• The consistent and growing use of our student success technology platform over the past year is attributable to the college’s renewal of Navigate. Our current efforts now focus on training and spreading its use.  
• The new Convocation Center at GGC is expected to lead to increased student engagement on campus and to enhance campus culture.
• AAMI Summit II in 2024 was GGC’s second and continues the important work of this program on campus.
• SGA’s increased involvement in student success initiatives from Fall 2023 leading into Spring 2024 provides an excellent opportunity for building and development.
• Two grant-funded living-learning communities (LLCs) were established in 2023, paving the way for more such LLCs in the future. In 2024, the LLCs have continued to provide opportunities for resident students in the ITEC and Health Sciences fields to pursue greatness with their fellow residents. We look forward to seeing such Living-Learning opportunities expand in 2025 and beyond (See also Supplemental Updates above).
• Department and Chair structure was solidified and developed with training and growth in 2023. In 2024, this structure has allowed students to be able to reach out to a POC for the discipline and has established a departmental culture in GGC’s academic Schools.
• Dean of Students role has been brought on board as a distinct (stand-alone) position, which is already showing benefits for students’ experience in several ways (e.g., handling cases with students who may be struggling, addressing attendance and integrity issues, along with students of concern).
• Sense of Belonging for students has been enhanced with multiple programming efforts, but many of these are sponsored by individual departments or programs, leading us to propose Success Networks as a strategic priority in the Strategic Plan and in this Momentum plan.
• Fall 2024 Learning Communities – LCs were maintained as a strategy, but we struggled to have the linked sections filled in a timely manner, leading to the new scaling strategy for Fall 2024: The ‘Opt-Out’ Learning Communities approach, in which all new first-year students will register first for their learning community at Grizzly Orientation, consisting of 3 linked sections, prior to adding additional courses to reach a target of 15 hrs.
• Regarding the use of the student success platform (Navigate): Faculty completed 485 progress reports in spring 2023 and fall 2023.

Space limitations – e.g., First Year Convocation, are being addressed in part through the construction of the new Convocation Center at GGC and the strategic use of available space, including when scheduling courses and student activities. For example, GGC is moving to the use of the 25Live Optimizer for more efficient course scheduling based on classroom features and student/faculty needs, with a spring 2025 pilot and assessment phase.

Course grades policy (e.g., D in electives; terminal courses) needs to be addressed to contribute to increased completion. Related policies we identified this past year that we look to address in 2024 are petitions, course substitutions, and overrides. Many of these resources will be more accessible to students and faculty through the academic Chairs structure adopted last year and developed further in 2024.

Why did things go well (when they did go well)? Why did they not go so well (when they didn’t)?

• The need to establish a more consistent approach to learning community enrollment has remained an area for growth and improvement. Increased communication across divisions (Academic and Student Affairs with Enrollment Management, in particular) is helping in this regard, and these efforts will be expanded.   
• Data to drive decisions – Data dashboards are now available and increasingly visible. We need to expand access and awareness. We also need to ensure that key decisions continue to be informed by up-to-date data.
• The Core IMPACTS general education curriculum refresh is in full implementation mode at GGC, guided by a Core IMPACTS task force. This campus-wide effort has presented some challenges in the need to update materials and communicate advising updates clearly to students, faculty, and staff, but has also brought us strategic opportunities to enhance communication and understanding of the core curriculum across campus, which contributes to our Momentum student success efforts.  

Conclusions: What lessons are you taking away from the past year? What do you need to have in place to be successful? Are the Momentum strategies you are working on aligned with your priorities and goals?

• Early Semester Success continues to be a priority, as we observe that students’ early success can drive their continued progression.
• We need to engage students more effectively and efficiently with the resources available to them. Identifying how students prefer to engage with information and resources will help in this work.
• A more interconnected network of support is needed to ensure student support from onboarding all the way through graduation and post-completion career planning.
• A more consistent approach to learning community enrollment is needed.
• Department chairs and departmental administrative assistants have been immensely helpful in carrying out our student success Momentum work. These individuals will be included more integrally in planning for the new strategic Success Networks.
• Enrollment Management (Registrar, Financial Aid) staff need to figure prominently in the new Success Networks.
• Library staff should continue to expand their role in the new Success Networks.
• Summer programming and onboarding and early semester success efforts need to be coordinated campuswide to improve the student transition experience.
• The three activity areas highlighted in our forward-looking Supplemental Updates (sec. 3, above): Career Readiness, Academic Greatness of Resident Students, and Themed Residential Communities, fit squarely with GGC’s Momentum and ASPIRE priority strategies.

The Momentum student success strategies reviewed in this Campus Plan Update report are aligned with the GGC Strategic Plan (2023-2025), especially its Goal 1: Expand Academic Access, Engagement and Success; and the USG Strategic Plan 2029, particularly its Student Success Goal: The University System of Georgia will increase degree completion through a robust and intensive approach to access and student success, utilizing data analytics and best practices.